Wellies to the rescue in Taymount Wood on New Year’s Day
What has WSWG been doing this month?
We have now closed the Community Consultation on the WSWG website, and again thank you very much to everyone who contributed to it. In its place we have created a webpage where you can find the full portfolio of documents which made up our CATS Application to Forestry and Land Scotland, including the Business Plan, with detailed financial plans to 10 years and in outline to 25 years.
Gorse and scrub clearance started well in Five Mile Wood in December but mechanical problems with the machinery put things behind schedule a bit. Work along the main track in Five Mile Wood has now been completed, which will hugely improve access and open up the verges for the wildflowers again. Work will start in Taymount Wood on 13 January which is great as it means it will be completed before the bird nesting season begins. Long tailed tits are amongst the earliest often starting their exquisitely intricate nestbuilding in February, even in our part of the country in milder years. (Data from a national study conducted by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) shows that a large range of species are now breeding up to 31 days earlier than they were in the 1960s.)
The core path in Taymount Wood has also been impeded in places by windblown trees for quite a while. The photo below shows where two recently windblown trunks in close proximity have made it virtually impassable a bit east of the gorse blockage. Forestry and Land Scotland are currently organising to have all the windblown trees cut through, which will make it so much easier to walk the full length of the woods again. Fingers crossed too that they may be able to arrange some vegetation clearance on the unsurfaced path between the main track and the north entrance at Five Mile Wood.
Hopefully we will have some good “after” photos for the February Community Monthly Update!
Our Barefoot Woodland Wanderer’s “Wood-wide Web” blog was featured in the Community Woodlands Association’s Winter 2022 e-newsletter, which also included an article by Alastair Fraser on Tayside Woodland Partnerships. If you’d like to find out more about the amazing things being done by community woodland groups across Scotland, visit www.communitywoods.org
Word of the Month
Newfie Camp: This was the nickname given by local people to the loggers’ station which operated at Taymount Wood in 1940-41, manned by Canadian loggers in the Newfoundland Overseas Forestry Unit (NOFU). The official name of the station was Camp 53, Taymount, one of over 70 at UK level operated as part of the war effort. The old photo below shows loggers building a hut at the Taymount Camp. WSWG has sought to recall this part of Taymount Wood’s history by suggesting the community enterprise facilities in our proposed Taymount Hub be known as the Camp 53 Café, Shop, Exhibition Space and Meeting Room. What a wonderful local history project and standing exhibition the Newfie Camp could make for WSWG in future.
What’s coming up next?
On 26 January, we will start the period of discussion and negotiation in the CATS process when two members of the CATS Panel, Judith Webb and Bill Slee, will be visiting the WSWG Project as a familiarisation process ahead of the formal CATS Panel meeting in February. We look forward to keeping you updated as that progresses.
